Introduction to the Project Team

Co-PI Dr. Lindsay Green-Gavrielidis is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Thornber Lab at URI. She has expertise in seaweed nursery set-up and cultivation systems. She has conducted research on aquaculture of several economically important seaweeds and was the co-author of a publicly available manual on how to set-up a nursery system for four species of seaweeds, including sugar kelp (Redmond et al., 2014). Dr. Green-Gavrielidis will be responsible for establishing and maintaining the kelp nursery and executing field experiments. Dr. Green-Gavrielidis will also assist in the workshops. Read more about Lindsay’s work here on her website.

Dr. Carol Thornber

Co-PI Dr. Carol Thornber is Associate Dean of Research in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences and a Professor at URI with extensive experience in seaweed ecology. Dr. Thornber will assist in the establishment of the kelp nursery provide seaweed expertise as needed. Read more about Dr. Thornber’s work on her lab website here.

Dr. Chris Kincaid

Dr. Dave Ullman

Co-PIs Drs. Kincaid and Ullman maintain both the Narragansett Bay Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) model and the Coastal Hydrodynamics Supercomputer Cluster on which the model runs (located at URI). They are working on the development of the coupled hydrodynamic-biogeochemical model for Narragansett Bay and a few of the focal coastal salt ponds (Pt. Judith Pond). Check out more of Dr. Kincaid’s work here, and Dr. Ullman here.

MS student Celeste Venolia

MS student Celeste Venolia started working on the project in January 2018. She is working on the Dynamic Energy Budget model for kelp, as well as how this gets coupled to the hydrodynamic-biogeochemical model. When she isn’t coding in Matlab, R, or Python, she is learning lots about field and lab techniques from Dr. Green-Gavrielidis. More on Celeste can be found here.

None of this work would be possible without the generous help and collaboration of the Rhode Island oyster farmers (and now kelp farmers!). We are grateful for their time, patience, and willingness to work together on all aspects of this research project. They inspire us to do better work to help the local sustainable seafood industry thrive.

Additionally, we are working with Dr. Autumn Oczkowski at the EPA Atlantic Ecology Division, Bren Smith of GreenWave, and Dale Leavitt of Roger Williams University.

We are grateful for the NOAA Saltonstall-Kennedy (award #17GAR008) program for funding this work. The project period is 2 years, from Sept 2017 to 2019. Stay tuned for more information!